


Falling

by OllieDeclan



Series: I Will Follow You Until the End of Time [5]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Gen, God Akaashi I'm sorry, Happy Ending, Kind of ties in with my other stories but can be read standalone, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 18:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18266885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OllieDeclan/pseuds/OllieDeclan
Summary: Life has never felt worth living.





	Falling

When Akaashi was 12, he sat on a bridge for hours, legs dangling over the edge. His body was numb from the cold and something else, eyes glazed as he stared down at the water. He taunted himself, daring himself to edge a little closer to the abyss of the ocean, teetering between life and death like it was a child's seesaw.

He knew that he was too chicken to actually jump. He knew that he was too weak-willed to actually end it all.

He would play with Death every few days, laughing with him but never quite taking his hand. 

He had never seen the point, really. To keep on living. He had no one gentle in his life, no one to tell him that everything would be alright. The people at school only liked him for his grades and his home-cooked meals. He went hungry, most days. Watching as the food he taught himself to cook left in the hands of someone who didn’t need it as much as he did. 

He was too small to fight back, even with the muscle from volleyball, so he sat in a dark hallway, hands shaking from hunger, willing himself to just get through the day.

And when he got home, his parents shook a test in his face, and sent him up to bed without dinner.

 

When Akaashi was 14, he tried to jump. He'd lost his friends after they caught on that he was gay, and his parents had gotten his report card. They screamed at him for hours over near-perfect grades because he spent too much time playing volleyball and not enough time studying.

He had stood up that night, toes over the water, and closed his eyes. He was falling then, for a mere millisecond, before a hand reached out to hold his own.

The other boy looked as tired as Akaashi himself, eyes sharp but hollow. He looked as if one small gust of wind could send him tumbling.

His name was Kenma. It was his sister's anniversary of teetering, much like Akaashi had. 

But no one was there to stop her fall.

Kenma told Akaashi, as he handed over his phone number, that whenever he felt like he should jump, he should call. They'd get through this together.  
Kenma became his most used contact in a week and his emergency contact within the month.  
Kenma was something that Akaashi had never had before. He was gentle kisses against his head whenever they saw each other, he was movie nights under the covers, muffling giggles because Kenma’s parents weren’t supposed to know Akaashi was there. 

And Akaashi supposed, when Kenma showed up on his doorstep in the dead of night, that Kenma thought he was something much the same. It was them against the world.

 

When Akaashi was 16, he met Bokuto. Kenma had brought some of Kuroo’s volleyball magazines over one day, some few months earlier, and he’d fallen in love with him. He’d fallen in love with everything except the thought of being with Bokuto romantically. He spent his days studying to get into Fukurodani, and his nights watching every little bit of Bokuto playing he could find. 

He’d never felt so intrigued by another person before. He was perfect, a star in the night’s sky, and so he held out until he got the chance to feel the happiness that he knew Bokuto radiated.

Months after he met Bokuto, he realised that he didn’t feel himself holding on each day, and hadn’t for a while. He still felt horrible, but he hadn’t visited the bridge, and some small part of him knew that things would only get better from there.

He knew, too, that the presence of Bokuto wasn’t a true anti-depressant. That one person couldn’t cure everything that had hurt him for his entire life. But in that moment, and in many moments to come, Bokuto was enough.

 

When Akaashi was 18, he showed his boyfriend his scars. Faded white lines on his hips and stomach, red gashes on his chest, small dots on his thighs.

His boyfriend pressed gentle hands to each and every one as if too much pressure would cause all of that anxiety and self-hatred to burst out again.

They were whispered confessions of fear and loneliness, confessions that not even Bokuto ever knew. 

When he was 20, his parents called him. Asking him why he hadn't kept in touch, why they had read all about him in college volleyball teams and in his band but never with any mention to them or his grades. 

He was silent for a long time. “You never cared about me. You only cared about my grades and the family name. I’m happy now, please leave me alone.” 

His parents started to yell, but he hung up. They haven't gotten through to him since. 

When Akaashi was 23, he toured the world to smiling faces and screaming fans. It reminded him of high school, standing alongside his best friend as a protagonist of the world. 

He spent days joking with his friends and nights singing out lyrics to love songs. Hours in love with everything around him and minutes reflecting on what once was. 

And he didn’t go hungry now, didn’t live every day as time until things would get better. Because life was good now, and he was finally falling out of hate, and into love. 


End file.
